Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich of Russia

Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich of Russia (21 September 1827-25 January 1892) was the second son of Czar Nicholas I of Russia and the younger brother of Czar Alexander II of Russia. He served as an Admiral in the Imperial Russian Navy, and he also supported liberal reform in the Russian Empire.

Biography
Konstantin Nikolayevich was born in St. Petersburg, Russian Empire in 1827, the son of Czar Nicholas I of Russia and Charlotte of Prussia. During the reign of his older brother Czar Alexander II of Russia, he became an admiral in the Imperial Russian Navy, making concerted efforts to modernize the Russian fleet (which had lacked modernization since Peter the Great's reign). He became a prominent liberal reformer, and he succeeded in pushing for the Emancipation Reform of 1861, which abolished serfdom. During the early 1860s, he served as Viceroy of Congress Poland. His daughter Olga Konstantinovna of Russia married King George I of Greece in 1867, and their son, Constantine I of Greece, was named for Grand Duke Konstantin. After the assassination of his brother Alexander in 1881, he fell from favor with the court, and Czar Alexander III of Russia gradually striped Konstantin of all of his government positions. He died in Pavlovsk in 1892 at the age of 64, having become an invalid after suffering from a stroke.